Week 1

Now, I am writing this at the end of week three. So, I plan on being pretty brief to get current. Part of this excercise for me is capturing my current feelings on things, and doing so three weeks past is not an effective way to do this. At least I don't need that much time to reflect.

My orientation was pleasant. There were a few people that I met who were instant "hook ups" to reach out to and share ideas with at the beginning of the program. However, there were 25 people, about 20 people too many for me to really get to get a feel for. Now I am curious, how long will it take for me to get a feel for someone's pesonality, political views, interests, etc. with primarily only electronic communication. And I do mean it when I describe my feeling as curious, I look forward to seeing how it plays out.

My professors seem responsive and aware of the fact that this is a new endeavor. I will wait a bit longer for some grading feedback to comment on their personalities ;) I kid. 

This semmester I have the following courses:
World Politics & Governance with Dr. Collins
Comparative Politics with Dr. Akinyemi (Dr. A)
Conflict Resolution/Management with Dr. Hallward (or Maia)
I believe the titles of the courses here are adequate descriptors for the time being and each subjects content will come with time/more entries.

I remember feeling like I was behind during orientation as our week technically began on a Sunday and we had due dates as early as Friday. Oh yeah, we met for the first time on Thursday! I had actually logged on to web-CT a few days prior. As I have expressed last post, I was frickin' chomping at the bit to get started. I got a few small things settled and took the plunge with some reading.Yet I still felt the first and second week were going to be a game of catch up. Wow, I sure was hoping at that time that I would be able to catch up. The reading load seemed MONSTROUS to someone who had been out of academia for 3 years. Fortunately for me (you know misery loves company) more of half of my colleagues were a few steps behind me. I would say that most had not signed in to web-CT yet.

My overall feeling was that I was trying to orchestrate concepts with due dates and create loose class schedules in my mind. I constantly felt as if puzzle pieces were floating above my mind's eye. It was up to me to get them together within the week. Looking back, I reached all of my goals for that week and felt that I was on pace in my game of catch up. One down, 15 to go!